


Lady Sings the Blues

by FluffyBeaumont



Category: Dark Shadows (1966)
Genre: Blackmail, Boats and Ships, Con Artists, Crimes & Criminals, Cunnilingus, F/M, Family Secrets, Marriage of Convenience, Negligee, Past Relationship(s), Wedding Night, Weddings, Woman on Top, illegitimate child, love child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-29
Updated: 2012-04-29
Packaged: 2017-11-04 12:12:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/393710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FluffyBeaumont/pseuds/FluffyBeaumont
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Liz and Jason's marriage had actually happened? What if Jason took her to a nice hotel for their honeymoon? What if he demanded - and got - his conjugal rights? And what if Liz actually wore that see-through nightgown that he bought for her?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lady Sings the Blues

“…and you can forget it, Jason. I am not wearing that.” Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, lately Elizabeth Collins Stoddard McGuire, turned her back on the diaphanous garment dangling from her new husband’s hand and fixed her lips in a frown of disdain.

“Now, Liz.” McGuire moved closer, intending to take her – however unwillingly – into his embrace, but she tore violently away from him and went to stand near the door. “Liz,” he began again, in conciliatory tones. “We are man and wife.” 

She fixed him with a freezing stare. “In name only.” 

McGuire raised one brow. “Is that so? Well, we are still legally married, and that means that as your husband, I have the right to demand certain marital…delights.” He dangled the delicate froth of nightgown in front of her. It was pink, with short, puffed sleeves and a full skirt embossed with hand-embroidered flowers of the same hue; there was a matching duster that went over it. It was utterly exquisite, Liz thought, and it must have cost him a fortune. 

“Marital delights?” Liz moved to the dressing table, seated herself and began taking down her hair. “Surely you’re joking.” She removed the complicated hairpiece that pinned to the crown of her head, and uncoiled her own long, dark hair from its tight bun. Unpinned, it reached nearly to her waist, hanging in dozens of little wavelets and curls. Liz had always had beautiful hair; Paul often complimented her on it during their brief but explosive courtship. When their marriage ended, she began covering her own chestnut mane with expensive, custom-made hair pieces that she ordered from New York; only in retrospect did she realize it was a strange thing to do. Her own mother’s hair had been thin and tended towards breakage but Liz had inherited her father’s Black Irish looks and his dark chestnut hair. Perhaps by covering it, she reasoned, she had been trying to erase any physical connection to Paul. 

“I’m not joking, Liz.” Jason shrugged out of his suit coat and tossed it over the trouser press in the corner of the room. Wanting to escape Collinwood as soon as possible after the ceremony, they’d driven to Montpelier, Vermont, where Jason had booked them into a small, intimate inn. Liz, hugging the car door, had hardly spoken two words to him during the long, eight-hour drive. “Believe me.” 

“And furthermore,” Liz continued, as if he hadn’t even spoken, “if you touch me –”

“You’ll what?” Jason yanked the knot of his tie down, unfastened his cufflinks. “Scream?” He grinned. “Let me remind you, darling Liz, that there are certain niceties in this relationship…niceties that must be observed if you want to continue living freely at Collinwood.” He kicked off his shoes and sat on the bed to peel off his dark socks. “Remember, I made a promise to keep your secret.” 

“I remember,” she replied dully. She picked up a hairbrush and began drawing it through her hair, watching Jason in the mirror. He unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it onto a chair and Liz couldn’t help but look at him. It had been ages since she’d looked at a man in any way but the most general; since the whole incident with Paul her innate desires had been vigorously tamped down, hidden away. She did not even allow herself the temporary release of self-satisfaction but embraced her celibacy as a penance. She had assumed that, with time, her notions of love, like physical desire, would burn away and she would be, finally, at peace. Until Jason McGuire, she’d been mostly successful – there had been that brief frisson when Cousin Barnabas had first arrived, but who could blame her? Even Carolyn had commented on the man’s attractiveness, his sumptuous physical presence. There were attractive men and attractive men but Barnabas Collins burned with an ancient, erotic fire. If Barnabas were flame, Liz thought, then Jason was water: trickling down as gently as rain upon a windowsill, until the floods came. 

Until the floods came. She sighed aloud and put down the hairbrush. 

Jason, wearing only his trousers, picked up the negligee and handed it to Liz. “Put it on.” The hard muscles of his chest stood out in sharp relief; his torso was dusted with dark hairs, as was his flat belly. “Go on.” He nodded towards the closed bathroom door. “I’ll be in bed.” He grinned, all white teeth and treacherous dimples. “Waiting.” 

 

 

 

Liz lay stiff as a corpse in the huge hotel bed, her back to Jason, one arm tucked beneath her head. She was wearing the nightgown. Jason reached out and tried to pull her to him but she resisted, hugging her side of the mattress so hard that her wrists ached. The curtains were drawn, casting the room into darkness; he couldn’t see her face. 

“Liz.” Jason sighed. “Why are you doing this?” 

“You know why.” Her voice was muffled. She sounded like she’d been crying. 

“Liz…” He sighed again. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not – I don’t hurt women. I don’t enjoy it.” He laid a hand on her shoulder. “Can’t you even kiss me?” He tried not to let his exasperation show, and failed. “Goddammit, Liz! Has it crossed your mind that you might – possibly – enjoy it?” 

She laughed unpleasantly, and didn’t answer him. 

Right, Jason thought. He’d have to prove his point by other means. “Liz,” he said quietly, “do you know I’ve been all over the world? Willie and me, we’ve sailed every ocean, and put in at many ports. Now, a man as well-traveled as I am, you know I must have picked up certain kinds of knowledge…”

“I don’t care.” 

He ran an index finger down her spine, stopping just above the sumptuous swell of her backside. “Oh, the things a man learns, Liz.” He cupped her hips in his palms. “For instance, most men proceed directly to the main event, which is, in my opinion, rushing things.” His large hands moved, slowly stroking her through the nightgown. “I personally don’t get anything out of it unless my partner is appropriately cared for.” Slowly, carefully, he raised the hem of the negligee and slid his palms up her body, stopping just under her breasts. Her breath hitched in her throat as his thumb brushed one of her nipples. She tensed, and a shudder ran through her as Jason pulled her tight against him. “And I want to care for you, Liz…” He rested his chin on her shoulder and spoke quietly in her ear: “Exquisitely.” 

“Jason –” She turned onto her back, looking up at him with those incredible eyes. “Is the door locked?” 

“Yes.” The nightgown was bunched around her neck and he drew aside the fabric, pressing his warm lips to her bare skin. “And I chose this room especially for us…at the back of the building…where no one can hear…”

“Oh –” It escaped her as an explosive little gasp and Jason might have kissed her just then, but he chose not to. Kisses were perhaps the most intimate part of lovemaking and they would come later, after he had driven her to madness with all the different kinds of pleasures that he’d learned in the various fleshpots of the world. 

“Go on, Liz.” Jason stroked her belly with his palms, opening her thighs with the gentlest of touches. “No one will hear you…and I know it’s been a long, long time.” He smiled. “It’s been awhile for me, too.” Not exactly true, but he doubted Liz would want to hear about his midnight visits to his dear friend Willie’s room….

“I don’t want this. I don’t want you,” she protested, even as her body betrayed her. She sighed as he kissed a slow trail down her stomach, pausing to look up at her. 

“Too late to turn back now,” he grinned. 

Her inner thighs were as smooth as the finest satin, exquisitely soft under the warm caresses of his tongue. He held her legs apart, tasting her, tracing the folds of her sex even as she writhed and cursed him. Jason slid his palms under her buttocks and lifted her off the bed, raising her to his mouth as he licked and nibbled and sucked. He was doing this, he knew, to prove a point, but he was after all only human – he felt himself responding to her softness, her heat, her intimate perfume, the gorgeous musk of her. God, she was beautiful like this: naked, her long hair streaming around her, her body possessed by pleasure. He leaned in and dragged his tongue in one long, silken stroke from back to front and she shuddered, crying out. “Atta girl,” he murmured, kissing the soft skin at the backs of her knees. He drew the hard nub of her sex into his mouth and sucked, varying the speed and rhythm until she trembled on the edge of her release. He lowered her to the bed, still holding her thighs, and sucked hard, flicking the tip of his tongue over her swollen flesh. Her body tensed, gathering itself and she was there. 

“Oh, _God!_ ” Her fingernails dug into his shoulders and she arched her hips up as the climax took her, writhing and shuddering. “Mmmmm….ah! Ah, God, Jason –” She jerked like a woman possessed, then subsided, trembling, while he waited for the initial shocks to wear away. 

“Liz,” he said quietly, raising his head to look at her. 

“Oh, Jason.” She was flushed and sweating, wanton and quite lovely. Jason decided it was a good look for her. 

“Liz.” His grin came and went and he bent to her again, flicked her with his tongue and watched as she tumbled into a second orgasm. If appearances were anything to go by, this one was even stronger than the first and she moaned and dug her fingers into his shoulders, hard enough to leave bruises. When he slid up the bed to lie next to her, she gazed at him in silence, then raised her face and kissed him. He dragged her hard against him and returned the kiss hungrily, his own desire mounting, throbbing in the bottom of his belly. “Liz, I think –”

“Yes.” She leaned into him for a moment. “Jason.” She reached between their bodies and took him in her hand, stroking him slowly until he thought he would die with it. 

He pressed himself inside of her, taking his weight on his elbows and reaching up to cradle her face in his hands. “I want –” He couldn’t bring himself to say the word in front of her, wife or no. “Ah, Jesus, Liz…” 

It was like being at sea again, as her body rose and fell under his. A spindle of pleasure spiked deep inside him and grew, rising, altering the passage of his breath. He had determined he would control this encounter as he controlled all others but this resolution was rapidly mown down by her presence in his bed, her hands moving on his body, her lips pressing against his naked shoulder, his chest, a lucid nipple. He once rode out a storm in the fickle North Atlantic, clinging to the rigging and praying to God and Jesus and all the saints and angels that he would somehow survive the writhing, pulsing sea that lifted him, that drove him down, relentless. Too soon he was there: he was coming, groaning aloud as he spilled himself inside her, shuddering down to sanity against her satin flesh. “Sorry –” He was crushing her. “Sorry, my darling, I didn’t mean…” He rolled onto his back and lay very still for a long time, feeling all the tiny, interior tics and pulses as his body cooled. 

He opened his eyes to see Liz leaning over him, gazing at him. “What?” 

“I can’t figure you out.” For once her voice was almost friendly. 

Jason reached for his cigarettes on the bedside table, lit one and inhaled gratefully. “I don’t understand what you mean,” he said. “But you are smiling, so perhaps it isn’t as dire as I think it is.” 

“Why marry me?” She plucked the cigarette from his lips and drew on it before handing it back to him. 

“Why marry anybody?” He stroked her bare arm. “Apart from, in our case, the obvious reason.” He referred, of course, to Paul Stoddard, the one thing he’d had left to hold over Liz. 

“We’re hardly young, Jason. This isn’t exactly the first blush of youthful passion.” She shrugged a lovely, naked shoulder. “Nor are these ideal circumstances: threats, blackmail. There was a time you wouldn’t have stooped to such measures.” 

His expression hardened. “That was a long, long time ago, Liz.” 

“Yes.” She drew a finger through the dark hair on his chest. “You could have done something about it then, but you chose not to. I wonder why.” 

He took a final drag on the cigarette and crushed it out in an ashtray. “I couldn’t have done what you wanted me to do, not then. Not the way you wanted, Liz. It would have never worked, you know that.” 

“Is that why you ran away to sea? Because you were afraid I’d trap you into marriage?” It had been an unpleasant scene and she remembered it as if it were yesterday. “I wasn’t asking you for respectability, Jason. I already had that. I was a Collins, remember?” 

“Yes, and I was nobody.” Anger tightened his chest and it was hard to breathe. “A sailor. An Irish ne’er-do-well without a penny to his name. Not exactly the sort of young man you’d want in the Collins family, or am I mistaken? I realise I’ve been mistaken a time or two before.” He hated the sound of bitterness that crept into his voice, hated the cowardice that had driven him away when she had wanted – needed – him to stay. “Not exactly the sort of man whose name you’d be inclined to take.” 

Silence swelled between them, an unbreachable gulf. Jason drew a shaky breath. “I went to see her, you know. Whenever I was in port, I went to that…place. The orphanage.” A drab, bleak place, it hadn’t impressed him but the charge matron assured him that Victoria was well cared for. “I went to that place.” He lay down and drew Liz into his arms. “You can’t undo the past, Liz. It isn’t possible.” 

“I loved you.” She leaned over him. “I loved you, Jason. That was all that mattered to me.” 

He clutched handfuls of her long, dark hair and kissed her. “I think when we get back to Collinsport, I should…leave town.” 

“Again.” 

“Lord Jesus, Liz, it’s for the best.” He could no longer hold her in thrall. “I’ll take Willie and go. I’ll go away to sea. Maybe if we pretend I’ve died, you can go on with your life. Without being tied to me, I mean.” He sighed. “Paul isn’t buried in the basement, Liz. He never was.” He couldn’t look at her. “I’ve been lying to you, using your fear to get what I want.” 

“Money?” She drew her long nails down his chest, flicking each of his nipples. “Jason, I know Paul isn’t buried in the basement. I’ve known it for a long time.” She kissed the point of his shoulder, biting gently. 

“You have?” He grunted as her hand found and stroked him, moving slow, bringing him to hardness. “And you didn’t…” He was losing the thread of what he’d been trying to say. “Say anything…you didn’t…say….”

She rose over him, gazing down with a lovely smile playing about her lips. “Of course not.” 

Jason caught hold of her hips and lowered her down on top of him, grunting gently as he slid inside. “What, then?” 

Liz braced herself, her palms against his chest, and began to move. “Turnabout is fair play, Jason.” She smiled as he tightened his grip, thrusting into her. “Turnabout is fair play.” 

He grinned, all dimples and white teeth. “That is is, Liz my darling. That it is.” 

**Author's Note:**

> This fic imagines what might have happened if Jason and Liz actually did go through with their wedding - in this case, Jason takes Liz away to romantic Montpelier, Vermont, for a honeymoon. The truth about Victoria Winters' parentage is something Liz has always tried to suppress; that Jason might be her father isn't that farfetched, and I stretched this to include a past relationship between Liz and Jason. Jason strikes me as the sort of man who would run away to sea if a lady told him she was carrying his child. The suggestion of a sexual relationship - even one of convenience - between Jason and Willie is non-canonical but makes sense, at least to me. Barnabas may arguably 'own' Willie but Jason was the one who popped his cherry...


End file.
